Talk:Philip Perry

REMOVED MATERIAL:
Not to cause any discord here, but I took the liberty of removing the names and birthdates of the subjects children. This does not seem to be common practice on Wikipedia pages of other public officials, so I do not know why anyone would post that here, since it is a bit invasive and not fair to these children, who were not, I don't think, consulted.Phoebe13 (talk) 15:47, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Perry is no longer eligible to practice law in his home state of California IF SOMEONE WOULD LIKE TO SOURCE THIS AND GIVE IT SOME RELEVANT CONTEXT, I'D HAVE NO PROBLEM W/ KEEPING IT. AS IT WAS OFFERED UNSOURCED, IT IMPLIED THAT THE SUBJECT IS A MEMBER OF THE BAR IN ALL THE OTHER 49 STATES, AND SEEMED OFFERED IN THE SPIRIT OF A RANDOM POT-SHOT.Phoebe13 (talk) 15:52, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

2nd delete: His Latham salary reportedly topped $700,000.
This needs sourcing, and context, and time frame. Why include a salary figure with no year included, and no comparable info on govt. salaries, which are more public? There's a comment in Perry's law school profile about how he loses money working for lower salary for the govt, if anyone wants to re-source the info and provide some proof of relevance. Otherwise, it looks like some snarky factoid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Phoebe13 (talk • contribs) 16:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Homeland Security Private Sector work
To 199.107.56.222 == please see your "talk" page...we need to know why you wanted to delete an entire section that was sourced adequately. Please let us know your thoughts. Otherwise, there is going to be a big gaping hole in Perry's history here. We can use the material from the L *& W website, but it does not give exact dates. Phoebe13 (talk) 17:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Revision of references
I have revised the style of the references in keeping with the Wikipedia citation templates. Current and future editors: kindly use the templates to help maintain a good level of quality, and, more importantly, ease of verifiability.

There was one reference that I could not find online: "Federal Faucet: Political Ties and Revolving Door Finds CCA at No. 1 in Industry," Connections, 25 Aug. 2008. I figured it might be a reference to the journal Connections. So I checked the online archive of the journal (https://consortium.pims.org/publications/quarterly-journals), but was unable to locate the article.

I'm not questioning the existence of the reference, but I do feel that the identifying information for the reference is inadequate. Therefore I have commented out the reference in the main article using html comment tags, i.e.,. - idunno271828 (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Clarifications possibly needed

 * In the following sentence, of what nature were the blueprints that Philip Perry drafted for the DHS? The word "blueprints" by itself is rather non-specific, and at face-value it would seem that he single-handedly designed the structure, operations, etc., of the DHS. :-)
 * "Among his tasks was drafting the blueprint for the new Department of Homeland Security."

(The sentence quoted above appears in the sub-section titled Office of Management and Budget.)


 * In the following sentence, what exactly is the title of the publication that this recognition has appeared in? The sentence is actually taken verbatim from Philip Perry's biography at the Latham & Watkins website.  I searched the website of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC, but did not find a publication titled, or containing the phrase, Benchmark: Litigation 2008.
 * "Mr. Perry has been recognized as a leading litigator in the Euromoney Institutional Investor Benchmark: Litigation 2008 guide."

(The sentence quoted above appears in the section titled Awards and Honors.) - idunno271828 (talk) 03:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Weird section heading (October 28, 2008)
What the heck does "Private Sector Homeland Security Practice Group" mean?(!) Is this merely the product of an amalgamation after several revisions, or it is real? - idunno271828 (talk) 00:57, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, thank you, Phoebe13, for changing the section heading.
 * - idunno271828 (talk) 05:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts on disputed Barton Gellman source
Below is a cross-post from the talk pages of Idunno, Gcdhsofficial, and others. In the meantime, I would like to voice support for Gcdhsofficial's challenge to the Angler book as a valid source, for two reasons. 1) If you check the actual reference offered in the book for page 10, for example, Gellman HIMSELF does not offer a source for the statements he makes about Mr. Perry's involvement in the vetting process; there is only a reference to interviews w/ a Mr. Gribbin in a new section that begins on that page. That alone would be enough to disqualify the material, but wait, there's more.  If you do a simple search of "Gellman" and "misquote" or "accusracy" you will see numerous other instances where the veracity of Gellman and the Post have been challenged by government officials such as David Kay, they are quoting, most notably pertaining to coverage of government statements on Saddam's WMD, and Judith Miller reporting of it.  So I will not object to the deletion of this material.

This is a truly and profoundly distressing situation, if the sources in question on this page are all publishing falsehoods. There is no deeper violation of someone than to publish what is not true. I do not wish to participate in violations of the truth. Since some of these postings from these sources have been mine, I will try to verify them w/ more neutral sources. Perhaps I erred in thinking that Washington Monthly and Mother Jones wish to avoid libel suits and therefore vet their work?

Here's the quote from the Gellman book re. the 2000 v.p. search: "Cheney hired lawyers at Latham & Watkins to sift teh thousands of pages thus produced on each of the candidates. The supervising partner was Philip J. Perry, Liz Cheney's husband." (p. 10) This writer is a Pulitzer winner, and a good deal of this book was run in the Washington Post before being collected in this book, so if a Pulitzer writer is lying, then this world is in worse shape than we knew. If the WaPo and the Penguin Press are libeling someone, this is a serious, serious matter and should be made publicly known ASAP. What are the Wikipedia rules on confirmation of sources or deletion based on source reliability? If we can provide a different printed source that contradicts the Gellman source, that would seem to trump the Gellman source? Perhaps if someone could refer me to that source, I can access it.Phoebe13 (talk) 22:27, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * For quick checks on the policies regarding reliable sources (references) I use the following three Wikipedia policies:
 * Primary, secondary and tertiary sources
 * Wikipedia:Verifiability: Reliable sources
 * Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: Reliable sources.


 * For the purposes of this article, however, I defer to the lengthier policy, Reliable sources, in regard to the use of articles from Mother Jones, The American Prospect, etc. I personally do not feel that articles from such sources adhere to the same rigorous factual thoroughness and reliability as articles from higher quality news sources, e.g., The Washington Post.  (The linked policy explains this view way better than I am able to though!)
 * - idunno271828 (talk) 05:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If Barton Gellman has indeed published articles in The Washington Post about Philip Perry, and these articles explicitly contain the controversial material that was deleted/modified in this Wikipedia entry, then I would recommend the use of these articles as references (as they are secondary sources) instead of the Angler book by Gellman (which would be a tertiary source). On the other hand, if there is no explicit substantiation of any of the claims via the articles in The Washington Post or another well reputed source, then I would just refrain from including these statements from the Wikipedia article since it would just create more headaches than good.


 * On that note, I need to get back to work :-)
 * - idunno271828 (talk) 06:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If I knew how barnstars work, I'd give you one. I checked that Gellman thing out (book vs. newspapers) yesterday, didn't find that quote in a Post search. So it appears to be limited to the book.  I think Gcdhsofficial is right:  it's either fabricated or it's reportorial failure to confirm a source.  So my vote would be to delete anything from the book.  If we rule out the info on the vetting process, then we should also rule out the statement about the John Edwards stand-in.  Is there a way (bot) to flag the book as a disputed source in any other pages?Phoebe13 (talk) 12:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

"Controversy" section
Being that the Controversy section is just starting to have the tone of back-and-forth assertion-and-rebuttal, I'm in favor of deleting the entire section. However, I certainly have no objections if some editor wants to construct a well-structured section on any controversies in the future as long as reliable secondary sources are used to provide facts, and no original research is included. If we're not careful about these policies we're gonna run into this same problem of POV, and possibly libelous text again. - idunno271828 (talk) 06:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, you're reading my mind. Totally, totally agree. If the sources are politicized and not vetted, it's no go.Phoebe13 (talk) 12:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Temporary Parking for unsourced info
This below looks like it is a really important consideration to include in this biography, when the sources are complete. If anyone can suggest sources that can pass muster, those can be tracked down and added, and re-posted on the page. The last sentence in this has a sort of hair-splitting quality to it that would need to be clarified if it's to be of any use in accurately explaining the inter-agency relationships and the evolution of DHS. It's also important that these sources be primary documents, i.e, the legislation itself, congressional testimony, sourced interviews w/ subject, journalism that has been vetted, etc. rather than sources with political or commercial interest in establishing a self-serving narrative:

This is a placeholder for text that was deleted by idunno271828 (talk) 05:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC). Phoebe13 (talk) 17:18, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Phoebe13, I apologize for deleting the unsourced text from the article that you had parked above temporarily. However, as per Wikipedia policy regarding the Biographies of living persons I felt it was necessary to delete it along with several rather elaborate sub-sections worth of text I had previously placed on this page.


 * Of course, none of the text that has been deleted is lost permanently since it still exists in either the archived history of this talk page and/or the archived history of the article itself.
 * - idunno271828 (talk) 05:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No problem, Idunno, makes perfect sense. Thank you...Phoebe13 (talk) 15:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Query re. Legal Times link access
Advice needed here: what to do when the link is to a subscription-only database? This is one of the few sources I have seen on this subject that actually provides coherent explanation of the subject's accomplishments in both public and private sector. There is a trove of important material in that source; however, external links to it are not going to provide access, since it's available only from subscription-only databases like Factiva, Dow Jones, etc. I added information from that source to the body of this entry; I'm not sure how to proceed with providing the links within the references, since they are not going to take the average reader anywhere without a subscription. Some of this material could possibly be taken from Feinberg's book, other info appears only here. But it is important that this material be included in this article, since it would propel the average reader into the realm of actual fact rather than "street" speculation. Phoebe13 (talk) 19:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * After a quick read of Verifiability I do not see any restriction on using references that require a subscription. IMHO as long as Legal Times meets the requirements of the Wikipedia policy on Reliable Sources I think the inclusion of the particular reference should be perfectly OK.
 * - idunno271828 (talk)